Car Crash
by BlackNightmareDragon
Summary: An AU story. Tamora and Felix are driving home from a party when - disaster strikes.


Tamora and Felix were on their way home from their friend Ralph's party. Felix was driving as Tamora sat in the front passenger seat while the car hurtled along the highway. It had been a bit of a celebration - six months since Ralph had adopted Vanellope as his daughter/sister. Although she was a handful, Ralph loved her as much as a man could love a nine-year-old girl.  
Tamora laughed as Felix joked a bit about his brother. Felix had been married to his dynamite gal for about a year and a half, and that alone was the sole reason for his existence. To imagine a life without her was impossible, yet he had lived alone up until he was 25, and met Tamora at a pub one night.  
Tamora felt the exact same way about Felix. He had just appeared in her life one day, and somehow gotten past all her defences and into her heart. The reason she had rejected him at first was because she was a little afraid, as much as she hated to admit. Her previous fiancee, Brad, had died of cancer shortly before their wedding day, when she was 21. Now, five years later, she had recovered. And that was all thanks to the short handyman sitting next to her.  
Felix turned off the highway, taking a scenic detour route down a country lane to their home in a small village. He flicked the headlights onto full beam - a second too late.  
The car hit a large overhanging branch, and Felix swerved. Unfortunately it had been snowing the past few days, and the road was slippery. The car skidded sideways, before tipping and rolling violently over once, twice, and a third time before it finally hit a lamppost roof-first and came to a halt. All Felix heard as he was flung from the car was a yelp of pain from his wife.  
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Tamora groaned, and lifted her head. She immediately gasped and turned to look for her husband, who wasn't there.  
She freed herself from the seatbelt and climbed out the car. Her leg was badly smashed and a good few of her ribs were broken. She could feel wetness on the back of her head, and she knew she was bleeding. She ignored the intense pain and looked for her husband.  
She spotted him lying in the foetal position, unconscious with a large gash in his side. He had a broken arm and other injuries Tamora didn't know about.  
"Felix?!" she gasped, and ran over to him. The blue baseball cap he always wore lay abandoned, with a red wet patch on the side of it.  
"Felix! Baby, wake, please?" Tamora knelt beside him and put his head in her hands, tears pouring down her cheeks. She realised her phone was still in her pocket, and she dialled 911. "Hello? I've been involved in a car crash, and my husband's hurt. Bad."  
She hung up once the person on the other end told her an ambulance was on it's way.  
She pulled Felix towards her so she was holding him curled up against her, and shuffled out of the middle of the road. She picked the hat up and placed it back on his head.  
He was still bleeding, and it was soaking into her jacket. She tugged it off (she had a top on underneath) and wrapped her husband up in it.  
It began to rain, and she was freezing, but she was past caring. She bundled Felix up more in her coat as the rain poured heavily over both of them.  
It seemed like an eternity before Tamora could hear the wail of the ambulance's sirens. She could see flashes of blue and red light coming along the road. The ambulance pulled to a stop ten feet from Tamora, and four medics jumped out and ran over. A few police cars arrived too and assessed the car. Medics carefully picked Felix up and laid him on a bed. Tamora tried to stand, but dark spots began to cloud her vision, and she couldn't keep unconsciousness from swallowing her as the world went black.  
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Felix shifted a little in the hospital bed, and his eyes fluttered open. He winced - the hospital lights stung his eyes. He noticed he was wearing an oxygen mask, and was hooked up to a heart monitor giving out a beeping sound.  
A doctor noticed he was awake, and came over.  
"Careful, sir, that was quite a nasty crash you had." he checked Felix's pulse, then pulled back the covers and checked the stitches on the wound on Felix's side. Satisfied, he pulled the covers back over, and walked round to the other side of the bed to tend to the person in the bed next to Felix's. The handyman couldn't see who it was, but the doctor talked to another medic in hushed voices, and, from what Felix could pick up, it wasn't good.  
"...doesn't look good..."  
"...lucky to be alive..."  
"...same crash..."  
"...not long before..."  
"...saved his life...her own..."  
Felix struggled to see who it was, but when the medics moved, the truth broke his heart.  
Lying in the bed beside him, an oxygen mask over her face and hooked up to a drip, visible stitching on her head, was his beloved Tammy-Jean.  
"Tammy!" he gasped, and tried to get out the bed to get to her, but a medic stopped him.  
"You can't get up, sir," she said simply. "Your wife's safe here,"  
"But I need to get to her!" Felix protested. He tried to struggle against the nurse's grip, but he eventually gave up.  
That night, and each night for the next two weeks, Felix didn't sleep. He kept his eyes fixed on his wife, praying for her to be okay. He didn't care if he didn't make it.  
A single tear escaped his eyes, followed by more as the thought kept going through his head.  
It was all his fault he had crashed, and his wife had been in a natural coma for two weeks. The doctor was letting him out tomorrow because his wounds had healed enough, but he wasn't leaving until he was sure his Tammy was okay.  
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Felix sat by his wife's hospital bed, her hand in both of his, stroking her knuckles with his thumb gently. He had been visiting her ever since he had been released. He had barely slept since - he was just too worried about her. Each time the doctors checked on her, they would give Felix a sympathetic look and talk about her condition in hushed voices when they thought he couldn't hear. But he could hear, and it sounded bad.  
A tear slipped down his cheek, and he leaned down and buried his face in the sheets of his wife's bed, sobbing.  
"It's all my fault!" he wailed, his body shaking and trembling.  
A hand ran over his head, stroking his hair.  
"Sshhhh, no it's not," a voice whispered.  
Felix looked up and gasped. Lying in the bed smiling weakly at him was Tamora.  
"TAMMY!" Felix practically screeched, and jumped on the bed to hug her. Tamora let out a sharp, loud yelp of pain and winced, biting her lip hard to stop herself screaming.  
Felix murmured "sorry" and slid off the bed, not looking at her.  
"It's okay," Tamora said quietly, still wincing with her teeth gritted.  
"No, it's not," Felix replied. "I hurt you even more. It was all my fault for crashing anyway," he said glumly. He stared at the floor, and another tear slipped down his face. He felt like dirt. He wished that it was him lying there instead of Tamora.  
"No, it wasn't" his wife said firmly, putting a hand on his cheek, "there was no way it was ever your fault. The road was slippery."  
Felix looked up at her, and Tamora noticed his eyes were full of tears.  
"It was, Tammy. If I wasn't so useless, and pathetic, and stupid, none of this would ever have happened. I really don't deserve you,"  
Tamora gently placed a finger on his lips to silence him.  
"Felix, you get your head out of the gutter right now. You're not useless, you're not pathetic and you're certainly not stupid. I love you for who you are. Sweet, caring, brave and selfless. If there's anyone here who doesn't deserve anyone, it's me,"  
Felix gave Tamora a gentle kiss on the forehead, and smiled.  
"I guess I must be the luckiest man in the world to have a wife like you,"


End file.
